The rest of us might be celebrating that we can finally keep playing Candy Crush during takeoff or landing, but flight attendants don’t seem to be too happy about the new regulations: the biggest union for flight attendants is suing the FAA to change the rules back.
According to the WSJ, flight attendants (or at least their union) have a few main concerns: passengers have stopped listening to safety demonstrations (because yup we were always listening before); tablets are becoming projectiles during turbulence; and somehow electronic devices could apparently impede passengers’ exit from a plane in case of emergency.
The union is challenging the FAA on legal grounds, claiming that the FAA’s change in policy required a “formal rule-making process”, whereas the FAA says that it only needed to issue updated guidance. Despite that quasi-valid-sounding argument, it looks like the FAA might take this one: according to the New York Times, Judge Harrt T. Edwards told a union lawyer that “airlines have always had discretion on how to handle this”. [WSJ]